Tag: homophobia

One of the most important questions facing our time in history is this… “If right-wing conservative Evangelical Christianity gets its way, what would the world look like?”

Despite how various Evangelicals might respond to this question, perhaps the best vantage point for an accurate discernment of the answer is to observe pivotal moments in history where conservative Evangelicals (as a whole) have actually won their desires. For nothing reveals the true content of one’s aspirations like the results they bring when successful.

Or perhaps, we could examine their commonly held beliefs and the future those beliefs envision. To be sure, the true sum of one’s faith can be found most clearly within the impact their faith desires, regardless of what they may or may not claim to confess. We are responsible both for what we believe and the future those beliefs ultimately bring forth, are we not?

With that in mind, one of the prized accomplishments of conservative Evangelicalism is the election and continued support of Donald Trump as President. Say what you will about the politics involved, the bottom line is this—his character, priorities, and leadership are clearly creating a world where the wealthy become richer, the poor become more vulnerable, greed is expanded, bullying is desensitized, corruption is protected, white privilege flourishes, elitism is unleashed, minorities are further marginalized, racism is energized, sexism is normalized, the LGTBQ community is increasingly demonized, and right-wing Christian conservatism is prioritized.

Yet sadly, this is not by chance.

In fact, among many conservative Evangelicals, these realities are tacitly received as nothing less than welcomed results. For if this presidency was the first occasion in which conservative Evangelicalism has had influential success towards the fruition of these same kind of deplorable outcomes, then this moment in history would be less profound. However, from the slavery and lynching of black people to the belittlement and abuse of women, conservative Evangelicalism has long resulted in the increased spiritual justification of some of the most evil atrocities ever committed on planet earth.

In fact, now we have an administration, like never before, that increasingly creates economic systems that blatantly benefit the wealthy and exploit the vulnerable, brutally splits families with children apart who are seeking asylum in our country, aggressively sides with Israel in order to further the fulfillment of “biblical” prophecy, threatens to pull news press credentials over “negative” coverage, belittles and thwarts people with disabilities, and has dismantled highly important LGBT-protecting policies, all in the name of undoing the leadership and legacy of our first black President.

Yet sadly, once again, this is not by chance.

Conservative Evangelicalism teaches its followers that faithfulness to God leads to financial prosperity and wealth. Having pastors with six figure salaries, churches with multi-million dollar facilities, and followers with luxurious lifestyles are seen as a reward from God not a departure from the ways of Jesus. In the mind of conservative Evangelicalism, if you are struggling financially or devoid of financial abundance, it is likely that some aspect of your faith life is askew. Ministry and Christian “success” is largely defined by the increase and accumulation of “more”—more money, more power, more influence, more campuses, more staff, more baptisms, more attenders, more planes, more speaking engagements, more followers on Twitter. In the world of conservative Evangelicalism, more is never less, more is always more—even at the expense of others.

Conservative Evangelicalism sees people primarily as spiritual projects for the ultimate goal of conversion into their faith system. Even helping the poor and hurting is largely seen as a means to a faith-serving end that builds their kingdom with more converts and satisfies their obligations of obedience to their faith. Poor hurting people are ultimately helped only to the extent in which it somehow serves the Evangelical faith system. In fact, within conservative Christianity, poverty (and even hardship) is often deemed as a result of unfaithfulness and wrong belief.

Conservative Evangelicalism manifests a territorial greed that desires to conquer people, groups, communities, perceived enemies, and the planet at large, not for the purpose of serving humanity selflessly, but rather garnering its submission to their faith system.

Conservative Evangelicalism largely portrays Jesus as a white man. Not just a white man, but a white man who is a Republican, gun-owning, racist homophobic nationalist who is wrapped in the American flag.

Conservative Evangelicalism manifests a good-old-boy-club mentality for white male heterosexuals that gives them a hypocritical privilege, license, and authority over women, often leading to their sexualization, discrimination, control, and abuse. In fact, the only sins that truly matter in conservative Evangelicalism are the ones that are different from theirs and enable them to condemn those who would threaten their white male heterosexual Christian privilege and power.

Conservative Evangelicalism declares the Bible as being the infallible word of God and their interpretations exclusively faithful and accurate to the discerning of its meaning and truth.

Conservative Evangelicalism interprets the Scriptures as condemning the LGBTQ community, labeling them as “abominations,” cancers to our society, enemies of procreation, and deviants destined for hell.

Conservative Evangelicalism once asserted a biblical justification for black slavery and murder, and the demonization of interracial marriage.

Conservative Evangelicalism portrays a god who is justified in killing his enemies, destroying entire of groups of people, and sentencing disobedient non-believers to a hell of eternal torment.

Make no mistake, what we see unfolding before our eyes is nothing less than the manifestation of the dystopian dreams of much of conservative Evangelicalism. No matter how much they might sprinkle it with spiritual glitter and dress it up with stage lighting and smoke machines, the finish line of their faith understanding is a violent Armageddon that ushers in a kingdom where anything that does not prosper white, male, heterosexual, conservative Christian power and privilege is eradicated from the earth. Spiritually rationalized racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, nationalism, greed, violence, and hypocrisy are all merely pieces of a much bigger puzzle.

This is put on display perhaps in no more profound fashion than through the current television show produced by Hulu, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based of the novel by Margaret Atwood. This prophetic drama puts forth many images, occurrences, and realities that can be easily seen as reflecting the dystopian fruition of the fundamental beliefs and values of right-wing conservative Evangelicalism.

The truth is, this powerful show does not require a suspension of current reality to understand its message, but merely a gaze into the future of what could be if conservative Evangelicalism continues to gets its way.

In fact, what should be most alarming to us all is this—if conservative Evangelicals were asked to publicly denounce every action and faith confession of the oppressors in “The Handmaid’s Tale” that they believe are contrary to their faith system, I suspect many would find little of which they could accurately object and honestly deny. In fact, nearly everything displayed in this prophetic drama is already currently taking place in one form or another, largely at the hands and influence of right-wing conservative Evangelicalism.

Read the Bible the way they read the Bible. Pray the prayers they pray. See the world the way they see it. Believe in God the way the believe in God. Spiritually justify what they spiritually justify. Then you will see, through a simple glance down the hall of its future, the kind of world conservative Evangelicalism envisions. For if conservative Evangelicalism gets its way, make no mistake, this is what the world would look like. To be sure, being “under his eye” won’t point us to the face of Jesus, but rather to the face of their evil.

Keep your soul vigilant, these are dark times for sure, and they’re only getting darker. Hear the call of Jesus upon your heart, “take up your resistance and follow me.”

America will die at the hands of men who exchanged a brown Jesus for white Christianity, and quite frankly, it’s beginning to seem like that’s just part of their plan—if they get their way.

In Leatherbound Terrorism, Chris chases the evils of conservative Evangelicalism out of the shadows and gives powerful voice to the cries of the religiously oppressed. Confronting issues like racism, sexism, homophobia, religious greed, hypocrisy, nationalism, white supremacy, privilege, and the weaponizing of the Bible, Leatherbound Terrorism pulls no punches. Endorsed by best selling authors Steve McVey and Baxter Kruger, Leatherbound Terrorism will challenge you, inspire you, and most certainly cause you to rethink your faith and life.

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There’s an unsettling of the Spirit moving across the land—the culmination of years of religious Christian corruption. Good people everywhere are sensing it deep within. What for many has been a growing source of suspicion is now becoming a for certain certainty. A time of emerging clarity is upon us as the curtains are drawn open and the true Wizard is revealed. Yet, there will be no clicking of the heels to save us now. For the American dream is being diabolically hijacked into the Conservative Evangelical scheme—God help us all.

In fact, in my estimation, there is truly no greater evil being wielded upon the earth. The false gospel of Evangelical Christianity has long been eroding our society, creating spiritual junkies, and asserting a white male heterosexual imperialism and privilege into every segment of our living. Its prescriptions for sin management only serve to further increase it, leaving good people spiritually strung out, hypocritical, self-righteous, and addicted to the poison, not the cure. With an insistence upon believing that God is angry, vengeful, and condemning of a sin-ladened humanity, followers spiritually justify a self-deputization to police society as they live out their perceived calling to convert the world to their privileged ideology, lest we all burn in hell. No matter the nobility of some with their good intentions and heart, the true aspirations, pursuits, and passions of much of conservative Evangelical Christianity are not true freedom and equality for all, but religious power and control for them. In their minds and hearts, the ushering in of the Kingdom of God is in reality, the ushering in of a white male heterosexual conservative Evangelical dominance in all places and things.

In contrast, a brown-skinned Jewish-born Jesus was crucified for bringing a scandalous message and manifestation of true Divinity that levels the playing field for all. For Grace is the great equalizer—none are better, only different—no matter your color, creed, orientation, gender, age, or status. Everyone is valued equally, all are given freedom completely, and no one is left condemned, unaccepted, or without affirmation, dignity, and community. Our best and worse performances are rendered powerless to sway that hands of God as our wholeness and purity before Her are irrevocably secured. Love is the very nature of God, and Grace is the only way of true Life. Faith is merely awakening to Grace by the power Christ’s faith within us. For Jesus came to destroy the ways of power, control, discrimination, violence, greed, and self-righteousness that empower the religious spirit who can so easily seduces us all—emptying Himself completely to reveal our true beauty and capacity to embrace what unites, heals, and connects us all—Love.

Sadly, as it was in the beginning, it is now most assuredly. The very same unconditional Love that brings heaven to the broken and emancipation to the captive, feels like hell to the religious, sending them into tailspins of furiously frustrated angst and rebellion—willing to crucify Jesus yet again wherever His truth threatens their evil empire. For the greatest menace to the conservative Evangelical Machine that seeks to overrun our planet is the emergence of true freedom and equality for all. That Jesus loves all, redeems all, embraces all, affirms all, and blesses all with heaven’s unlimited supply of equality and freedom is their greatest fear, trigger, and vulnerability—rendering their monstrous system of faith to be impotent, fraudulent, and devoid of true Life. That’s why nearly every conservative Evangelical interpretation of Scripture, personification of God, and assertion in society is desperately bent on diluting and covering up this revelation of Grace and its manifestation upon the earth, and quickly replacing it with a conditional religious self-righteous brand of believing—not because they are lovers of Truth, but because they are worshippers of power. For violence, hatred, bigotry, discrimination, greed, self-righteousness, judgmentalism, and evil are not intrinsic to being truly human, they’re actually common byproducts of being truly religious—subhuman.

This is the real cataclysmic spiritual battle being waged all around us that is now infiltrating and threatening the future of our country like never before. For what is the greatest obstacle to the full fruition of white male heterosexual conservative Evangelical dominance? A nation founded and anchored upon the sure premise that true equality, dignity, and freedom is for all, by divine design and sanction. For no one desires to commandeer the American flag, hijack our constitution, and fashion Jesus into the hood ornament of their world bulldozer more than white male heterosexual right-wing conservative Evangelical Christianity. In fact, the truth is, “Make America Great” is Evangelical code for “Make America Ours.” And not just America—the entire world.

My friend, most everything you see happening is leading towards these ends. Open your eyes to see and your ears to hear. The underlying reason why racism still lives and thrives, sexism is still rampant, homophobia and transphobia increases, kneeling for the national anthem is rendered a deplorable crime, the drums of war keep pounding, public school systems are being undermined, human rights are being dismissed, churches raise the Christian flag above our national flag, wars on drugs are declared that end up disproportionately imprisoning the black population and using them for free labor, foundational Christian morals and values are conveniently suspended in order to elect a white, male, heterosexual, Evangelical supporting President, and conservative Christians are charged with the mandate to assert their faith and values into every sector of society in order to win dominance. All of this is for one purpose, and one purpose alone—the full fruition of a white male heterosexual conservative Evangelical Christian Empire, even to the destruction of America and beyond.

All this talk about sin, Jesus, morality, truth, biblical faithfulness, fairness, and societal health coming from the bloviations of right-wing conservative Christianity—don’t be fooled and bite from the dark fruits dangling off their tree. It’s all smoke and mirrors to disguise the real agenda hissing in the shadows. For if it were all about Jesus, sin, hell, and scriptural faithfulness, conservative Evangelical Christianity would be fully immersed and passionately engaged in all things opposite of what we see so many of them pursuing—and most of all, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, imperialism, bigotry, violence, white-privilege, greed, and self-righteousness would be rendered the greatest of sins and cease to be legitimized within American Christianity, resulting in it all becoming largely dismantled in our society.

Yet sadly, that day is not here, and likely not forthcoming. For the tenets of true freedom, divine dignity, and equality for all upon which this nation was birthed, are the ultimate obstacles to conservative Evangelical Christianity’s battle to take the hill and Lord itself over our country. For at the end of the day, what matters most is that true freedom, divine dignity, and equality for all is contrary to the conservative Evangelical agenda of white male heterosexual power and privilege. In fact, perhaps nothing is more repulsive to the Evangelical religious system than people living free to believe, worship, and pursue happiness outside of their control and without compliance to their creeds, especially those who in doing so would foster the dismantling of white male heterosexual conservative Evangelical power and privilege.

Connect the dots, look beyond the obvious, and engage the spiritual discernment the mind of Christ within you affords. Theological, spiritual, moral, and religious error, slight of hand, and brainwashing of this magnitude are never achieved unintentionally.

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I’m not going to sugarcoat it for your listening pleasure, at least not this time.

You say, “tomato,” I say, “testicles”—see how far our worlds are apart? I’m breaking all the religious rules and coloring outside all of the conservative lines. And not just that—I’m pretty sure I’ll be going straight to hell, too.

The precise moment our mutual paths of faith started to diverge, I’m not exactly sure. Yet, one thing is certainly crystal clear, we sing from very different songbooks now.

Perhaps to your surprise, however, there is one particular chorus you’re constantly barking into my ears that I can gladly meet with one hundred percent agreement and enthusiasm—conservative Evangelical Christianity, you’re damn right I’m in rebellion.

You got me, you caught me, you smoked it out of my soul—quick, call the Elders to hold me accountable with a “come to Jesus” small group intervention. It’s true, I’m pushing back and even punching at the throat of nearly everything you hold to be true and life giving.

I’m sorry, but enough is enough—your tone policing, guilt tripping, glare giving, bible thumping, fear mongering tractor beams aren’t going to suck me back into your Evangelical Death Star anymore. I’ve tasted and seen the fruits of your faith convictions, my days of grin-and-bear-it are over. Today is the day of my emancipation, I’m finally drawing the line by erasing all of yours. Bravery has overcome and broken my heart wide open—my truth will not be silenced and my life imprisoned any longer. I have a song to sing, a verse to put down—and it just so happens, the opening lines go a little something like this, “Conservative Evangelical Christianity, you can bet your ass I’m in rebellion…”

Every time you play school-yard-bully to the LGBTQ community, I’m going to be all up in your kindergarten Kool-Aid until the Teacher blows the whistle. For who the hell do you think you are, speaking divine condemnation over an entire group of God-adored people? Is your head so far up your ideological rear end you don’t realize the lives that you’re destroying?

Oh please, don’t give me anymore of this, “The bible says…” crap as your spiritual justification and defense. We heard you pimp that same evil rhyme to justify black slavery and lynchings on trees—yah, that’s the ultra-lame level of your exegetical capacity. Your slight of hand with the Scriptures may have seemingly sanitized your schemes in the past, but people are starting to unshackle from your spiritual control tactics and fully engage the mind of Christ within them—all to your apparent dismay and obsessive fear of freedom. For a great awakening of divine revelation is sweeping across the planet, your “clear teachings of the Bible” aren’t so clear, but one thing certainly is—to increasingly follow Jesus is to increasingly come into fierce rebellion against your bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, and bible idolatry.

So, yes, you’re damn right I’m in rebellion, especially when you seem to have an unprecedented expertise in drawing people onto the wrong side of history, the Bible, and the heart of Jesus.

Every time you push your white conservative male heterosexual privilege on church and society, I’m going to be calling your scheming lust for supremacy out of the shadows. In fact, I gotta hand it to you, you’ve been super slick with your starch-pleated packaging. That whole, “Men should be the spiritual leaders of the home,” “America is a Christian nation,” and “God didn’t create Adam and Steve” mantra might appear, to the untrained eye, to simply be a noble reflection of your desire to honor your faith convictions. Sadly, the truth is much more perverse and diabolical. In fact, wipe the lipstick off that conservative Evangelical pig and your real aspirations ooze like pus to the surface—power and privilege.

Why can’t women be truly seen and treated as equal to men in all things? White conservative male heterosexual power and privilege—that’s why.

Why can’t America be a place of true religious freedom where all faiths are equally valued, recognized, and observed? White conservative male heterosexual power and privilege.

Why can’t we be a nation of true equality where all colors, genders, orientations, nationalities, ages, and classes are afforded equal human dignity, value, and rights? You guessed it—white conservative male heterosexual power and privilege.

So, let’s get real.

For you, it’s not about Jesus, it never has been. It’s not about true Christianity, it never has been. It’s not even about sin and faithfulness to God, it never has been. That’s all one big spiritual veil to your monstrous agenda—power and privilege.

For if it were all about Jesus, true Christianity, sin, and faithfulness to God, here’s what I do know for sure—you’d be doing so much house cleaning there’d be no time or energy for all your religious bloviating, condemnation, and insisting on your own ways in society.

The truth is, when it comes to “God, country, home, and church,” it’s always been about white male heterosexual power and privilege, and sadly, it seems it always will—even to your ultimate demise. For the spiritual and biblical gymnastics you’re apparently willing to go through in attempt to make Jesus the hood ornament of your white conservative male heterosexual world bulldozer are not only baffling, but finally being exposed for their true evil.

So, yes, you’re damn right I’m in rebellion against your white conservative male heterosexual ego trip and world pillaging tour, and I have this sense, so is a brown-skinned Jewish-born middle-Eastern refugee named Jesus. And together, we’re going to be chasing your junk out the temple.

Every time you come at me with a faith understanding that requires me to turn off my brain and reject common sense, I’m going to be defending my sanity and questioning yours with the mind that Christ gave me. In fact, though faith in the unseen and incomprehensible is a healthy and necessary ingredient to following Jesus, I find that the more faith I place in Him, the more He desires for me to rethink yours.

I’m sorry, but the mind of Christ within me won’t stop setting off alarms deep inside my being nearly every time you quote the Bible at me. You’re so insistent on its inerrancy and your exclusive interpretations of it—which is more than enough reason for anyone’s suspicion. For the time has come where I can no longer subscribe to a God who smashes babies on rocks, a 6,000 year old earth, and a sadistic Father who requires the brutal death of His own Son to prevent Him from sending the very people He claims to love into a hell of eternal torture if they don’t love Him back in return—precisely.

With all due respect, this is my stop, and I’m going to have to cash in my chips this time. But I promise, I do so giving you the benefit of the doubt in believing you don’t truly subscribe to this twisted level of theological insanity. Rather, you hold to a literalism and inerrancy of Scripture like a stripper to a pole because you desperately need it in order conform, control people, and justify your blasphemy to the doubts, insecurities, and inconsistencies you suppress deep within.

So, yes, you’re damn right I’m in rebellion, for the Spirit of Christ within me has convinced my soul that turning off my brain is the last thing He desires for me to do—especially around your funhouse of smoke and mirrors.

Every time you try to grow me into your own personal ChiaPet for Jesus, I’m going to be breaking every mold and pushing past every barrier in which you hope to contain me. In fact, God already finished His work in my life through the cross where He perfected me, so anything you’re hoping to add on, I can know for sure, is nothing but just a steaming pile of horse shit religion.

You can take all your rules, to-do steps, sin-management tactics, growth formulas, and attributes of a genuine “sold-out’ Christian. You can have all your worship concerts, schools, conferences, t-shirts, books, movies, and clubs with crosses on top. None of those drugs work, but only serve to keep people strung-out and addicted to your religious prescriptions.

Hear me, and hear me well. I’m not a project for your spiritual gratification where everything you pour into my life is ultimately purposed on growing me into your own conservative Evangelical image. I’m not a toy to play with, a robot to program, or an action figure for you to bend, twist, dress up, and march into your battles to condemn and conquer the world. I’m not a seed engineered to fill your fields, produce your fruits, and feed your insatiable conservative Evangelical ego. And most of all, I’m not a title belt from your fat-bellied conservative Evangelical smack down upon the world.

So, yes, you’re damn right I’m in rebellion, and I’m going to be all the more. For every time you seek to lobotomize the minds and souls of good people and assimilate them into your conservative Evangelical Borg, I’m going to be the resistance you can’t stop, control, or keep from exposing your evil agenda to rid the world of true freedom and joy.

Every time you prequalify people for love and encourage me to do the same, I’m going to be loving people all the more lavishly and unconditionally with a Grace that frustrates you to the core and exposes your shame. For the unstoppable force of Grace cannot be overcome—bending every religious knee and breaking down every wall. Watch, as every pretentious, judgmental, religiously-spirited, greedy, hypocritical, and imperialistic fruit dangling off your conservative Evangelical tree is being shaken to the ground. For nothing makes a better compost than the ruins of your evil system of faith, out of which God is resurrecting a Grace-awakening that gathers the broken and sends the religious scattering in its wake.

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Why do many cringe at modern Christianity with their gag reflexes in full bloom?

Why are conservative brands of faith losing so much of their credibility and influence?

Do we really want to know—could we handle the truth—would we even listen to their reason?

It’s not because of some kind inherent distaste for Jesus and a rejection of His Truth. It’s not from a deep dark cultural stronghold of apathetic spiritual laziness. It’s not because of some depraved aversion to God and holiness rampant within society. We may wish it were all so easily wrapped up and reasoned away with the simple declaration that the “world” is showing itself to be as hopelessly lost, blind, wayward, and carnal as we deem them to be—but they aren’t.

In fact, the Light God has placed within all people shines into the religious darkness of our day, revealing a disturbing manifestation humanity can’t ignore—the reckless tampering and deep distrust of Love within conservative Christianity. For all of our spiritual fanfare, many rightfully discern that something is deeply askew among us, and though they may not always be able to put their finger on it, they can’t shake the unsettling in their spirit. The one place, the one people with whom love should boldly rule the day, be adored in all its splendor, and lifted high up above all things, is among Christians. Yet, the loudest confession heard around the world from the megaphone of conservative Christianity is sadly this—”Love isn’t enough.”

Try as we might to frantically plaster heaping loads of lipstick upon the pig of our conservative brand of Christianity, people aren’t stupid. The Judas that is conservative Christianity has sold out Love in exchange for power, betrayed Grace with the kiss of control, and crucified it all into a self-righteous religion for the privileged—daring to pimp it as the one true authentic way of Jesus.

Instead of being unified by love and that being enough, we insist on gathering in cookie-cutter groups of like-minded people corralled together by a laundry list of beliefs, values, and vision we must agree upon to have membership, relationship, and community with one another. Love takes a back seat (if a seat at all) and must first yield to our creeds instead of our creeds first yielding to Love. Hollow Churches of fake unity span the horizon as far as the eyes can see—people resign themselves to going through the motions and agreeing on the surface in order to fit in and meet expectations. Love doesn’t rule in our churches, rules rule in our churches. Compliance, conformity, conditions—everything but Love. Spiritual growth is restricted and restrained—coloring outside the lines of conservative ideology is shamed, even if just for a season. Where Jesus wants to build longer tables where every creed, orientation, gender, belief, color, status, shape, and nationality has a seat, we build taller walls of every spiritual, relational, and physical dimension and try to sell it to the world as true community.

Instead of simply loving people and that being enough, we treat them as projects—a spiritual notch for our religious belts. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that we not only have the calling but the capacity to change people, even ourselves. What only the Spirit can do, we have hijacked into our own personal and corporate mission. The truth is, we don’t trust the Spirit, nor Grace, nor Love to do what only the Spirit, Grace, and Love can do—quite the opposite. Rather, in order to legitimize our own efforts and justify our fleshly interventions, we declare pure Grace to be cheap, unconditional Love to be dangerous, and the Spirit needing our involvement. While Jesus’ greatest concern is that people get more than enough love and believe in it completely, our greatest fear is that we would grant too much of it and cause people to trust it too deeply. You say that God loves me where I’m at, but enough not to leave me there—which is of course, where you see the beginning of your mission to try and fix me. I say, God loves me enough that He doesn’t need you to repair, change, confront, or direct me—His Grace is sufficient, His Spirit fully capable, and His Love is more than enough to do the trick—with or without you. See, that’s the real kicker, isn’t it? For if God ever did use you in another’s life to help in the molding, it would be through the fruits of the Spirit not the nails, crosses, proof-texts, and conditions of your conservative methodology. Why? Because I, like everyone else, am a divinely made person not a church mission project.

Imagine if Christianity became a faith where love is enough, and therefore our unity could be founded not on a contrived fabricated alignment of ambition, thinking, and believing, but on a genuine willingness to agree to disagree and embrace our differences—all at the table.

Imagine if Christianity became a faith where love is enough, and therefore the everything of what we had in common was our mutual respect of all people of all faiths, backgrounds, and settings as created and divinely imaged by God Himself no less than we or anyone else—no more discrimination, marginalization, or people-judging.

Imagine if Christianity became a faith where love is enough, and therefore we became a people of genuine equality, where everyone is beautifully different, and beautifully no better or worthy—no more one-upping, privilege-seeking, or people-labeling.

Imagine if Christianity became a faith where love is enough, and therefore the Spirit was given full trust and freedom to work in the hearts, minds, and souls of people as we simply loved them unconditionally—no more strings attached, fine-print, deal-breakers, or hidden expectations.

Imagine if Christianity became a faith where love is enough, and therefore loving people (beginning with ourselves) was the only “to do” if there ever needed to be a list—no more people-policing, sin-managing, fruit-inspecting, God-appeasing, faith-proving, self-improving, or becoming all-you-can-be for Jesus.

Imagine if Christianity became a faith where love is enough, and therefore we became a people best known by “the greatest of these is love” instead of “the greatest of these is us”—no more violence, condemnation, and insisting on our own way.

For sadly, we have made Jesus into so much of everything He is not and following Him into such a tiring, empty, phony, love-less, and selfish pursuit. If only we could see what we have become and the people who are dying on our vines, destroyed at the feet of our conservatism. The shade we throw at the world is scorching good people, nailing Jesus back upon the cross, and declaring to the planet, “Love doesn’t win, Grace isn’t sufficient, and Hell is the heart of the Father for people who don’t love Him back in return.”

Conservative Christian, I beg of you, why can’t love be enough?

Why can’t love be enough as the sum and singular message of the Gospel of Jesus?

Why can’t love be enough to bring us together and graft us into authentic community?

Why can’t love be enough to fulfill and maximize our divine responsibility and care for people?

Why can’t love be enough to guide our exegesis, calibrate our theologies, and dictate our use of the Scriptures?

Why can’t love be enough for those with whom we disagree, believe to be sinning, or even show themselves to be an enemy?

Do we really need all this other stuff? Nationalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, judgmentalism, self-righteousness, selfishness, and elitism? Bible-weaponizing debates, clubs with crosses on top, and a gun-carrying, militant, Republican version of Jesus who feeds the multitudes but denies healthcare to the hundreds of thousands?

Is this truly the heart and way of Jesus?

I just want to love God, myself, and people without restriction, conditions, or limits. I want to be free to journey with Jesus, fully abandoned to where His Grace might take me. I want to experience the joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction of a life lived outside the confines, condemnations, and religious rule-keeping of religion.

With a world watching, waiting, and carefully listening to the beat of our hearts in hopes of seeing Jesus.

Conservative Christian, I beg of you, for the sake of heaven and all humanity, why can’t love be enough?

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Yet, with nearly every headline and activity that involves President Trump, conservative Christianity, and the modern American church, I’m finding it increasingly difficult.

It’s all too apparent, you vehemently stand against the LGBTQ community, believing their sexualities in gender and orientation are willful evil choices in rebellion to your holy God and way of living. With methods like “Conversion Therapy,” you are convinced these human beings require serious repair, and their hope of returning to the sexual design you believe God has authored for all creation is simply a few prayer sessions and some spiritual intervention away. Condemning them to hell, insisting theirs is a life of sin, boycotting companies, bullying them with bathrooms, restricting and rejecting them in church, discriminating against them in society, and pursuing their overall eradication are tactics highly intrinsic to your faith understanding. Even a drastic suicide rate among transgender people largely at the hands of conservative Christianity, hardly, if ever, gives you pause—for some, even bringing delight.

With all due respect, help me understand. How could you possibly feel good, justified, and supported by Jesus in any of this?

With countless translations and different interpretations of the Bible—from Calvinism to Arminianism, from Universalism to Penal Substitution. With over 30,000 different denominations holding drastically different, biblical conclusions on basic issues like “salvation.” With the simple fact that the Greek words now biblically translated to mean “homosexual” were not translated as such until 1945. With a sure history of countless Christians convinced they held the scriptural truth while committing terrible atrocities in the name of God and biblical faithfulness. How on earth can you not be stricken, humbled, and entirely dismantled at the thought that you, with all your seemingly biblically-authored homophobic and transphobic attitudes and actions, could very likely be wrong—and not just wrong, but participating in evil?

The apostle Paul initially concluded that the Gospel excluded the Gentiles—wrong. John Calvin, the founder of Calvinism, believed his theology was so pure and true that it justified the murder of his disagreers—wrong. Early conservative Christian American settlers believed God endorsed the pillaging and murdering of the American Indian—wrong. Conservative American Christians of the 19th and 20th centuries believed that according to the Bible, blacks were inferior humans who deserved discrimination and a life of brutal slavery, and marriage between a white and black person was an abomination—wrong. Many modern, conservative Christians still believe that women are a lesser vessel and should be restricted from certain roles in the church—you guessed it, wrong again.

How many times do we have to be so drastically and demonically wrong until we finally listen to the counsel of the biblical writer who admonished, “lean not on your own understanding?”

If it’s the sole job of the Holy Spirit to convict and convert, then with all due respect, what the hell are you doing and why isn’t all your barking, condemning, praying, and conversion therapies working? Wouldn’t it seem that perhaps your time would be better spent fixing your own fifty-percent divorce rate and gross levels of chosen obesity among conservative Christians, instead of brutally and arrogantly using the God-imaged LGBTQ community as your spiritual guinea pigs, while hoping to convince us you’re doing so to be “biblical” and faithful to Jesus?

Please, help me understand.

Isn’t it, at the very least, pure barbarianism to harbor a default position of condemnation when the “clear teachings of the bible” are clearly not so clear at all? If we can’t get something as simple as “salvation” settled and certain, how could you ever become so sure in your bigotry towards something so complicated as human sexuality?

Of course, I could be wrong, that’s a no brainer—which is why I choose to be purely loving, trusting God to go around me if need be. His grace is more than sufficient.

Help me understand, why isn’t that the sum of what you are doing?

It’s also all too apparent, you still support Donald Trump and rejoice that he is our president, praising his name and leadership.

Evidently, pussy-grabbing, sexism, xenophobia, adultery, racism, vulgarity, imperialism, lying, greed, and childish immaturity have suddenly become biblical traits for Godly leadership—of course, as long as your conservative faith-understanding and ideology is being nationalized as the American dream, right? That’s not hypocrisy, that’s spiritual creativity for the cause of Jesus in our country—excuse me as I vomit in disagreement.

Help me understand.

You say you want a Godly Christian country, yet it seems that every step you take towards the fruition of this ideal finds you completely ignoring and re-imaging Jesus. Has Christ been drop-kicked to the back seat and replaced with conservative, Evangelical Christianity? Help me understand.

You say you want one nation under God, yet you enthusiastically support a president who acts, leads, and carries himself in ways that are blatantly nothing like Jesus. He couldn’t even qualify to be the elder of your church, serve in the children’s ministry, or be trusted with the girl’s softball team, yet you adore him as the leader of our nation, which you say was founded on Christianity. Help me understand.

You say every person has the preexisting condition of a sinful, sin nature and therefore is in desperate need of Christian, spiritual healing. You say it’s your mission to bring the cure of Jesus to every person—fostering life, peace, joy and eternity for all. You say the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and God does not take delight in evil nor suffering. You say you worship the same Jesus who used the story of a Samaritan giving a strange foreigner free healthcare as an example of what it looks like to be truly living as a Christian. Yet, you support a president who has led the way in reducing and removing affordable healthcare for thousands of God-imaged people and tax-paying citizens, denying them coverage for preexisting conditions—sentencing them to a hopeless existence of pain, illness, and suffering. Help me understand.

You say “all lives matter” and that your faith-understanding is filled with compassion. Yet, you eagerly support a president whose values, desires, and policies are bent towards systematically displacing, deporting, and preventing foreigners and refugees from the safety, resources, and freedoms of our country.

You say that sacrifice, generosity, humility, and serving are hallmarks of your conservative faith, and that seeking the betterment of another even to the detriment of self is an important tenet of Christian living. Yet, you applaud a president who aggressively positions and extends our country into the world in some of the most arrogant, self-serving, power-seeking, and greedy ways—many of which calculate a loss for another at the expense of a win for us. Help me understand.

You say “it’s not the government’s job” when it comes to living out so many of the values of Jesus—human care, compassion, rights, and provision. Yet, ironically, so many of the things that support the nationalism and imperialism of your conservative faith-understanding suddenly have become critical, urgent, and needed governmentally-controlled responsibilities. Help me understand.

In a world that so desperately needs hope, peace, love, grace, and compassion, how is it that you can take such a person as Jesus who manifests it all so purely, and turn Him into a faith that is so blatantly obnoxious?

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Maybe you’re tired of hearing it, maybe you don’t care, or maybe you just don’t want to see it, but the truth is, whether we like it or not, most of the world doesn’t view Christians nor Christianity in a positive light—especially the conservative brand of our faith. For all our efforts to “win people for Christ” with even the best of intentions, at the end of the day, many see Christians as hypocritical pretentious jerks, “church” as a ridiculous waste of time, and our faith as a hopeless, ignorant, hateful, and useless relic of the past that refuses to evolve.

Sure, we could spiritualize it all away with leather-bound excuses as we declare that “in these the end of days, people will turn away.” Yet sadly, blinded to our own rebellion, it is in fact we, not them, who have increasingly rejected the true and pure Gospel—falling away from God who is Love, Jesus who is Grace, and His message that is peace. Once again, the irony is deafening as the religious who point fingers at the world in disgust and blame are the ones found to be most entrenched in its evils—lacking real compassion, humility, love, and true faith.

Believe what you want to believe, draw the lines where you want to draw, retreat to your camps, wrap yourself in the faith flag that seems to best suit your spiritual comforts—the world doesn’t care. We have largely lost our voice, surrendered much of our influence, and bear the image of spiritual buffoons in the eyes of many who look upon us. Fair or unfair, that’s the mirror of truth—whether we are willing to stand in front of it or not.

Sure, a few megachurches and contemporary ministries are increasing in numbers as sheep shift from pasture to pasture seeking out the best show. Yet still, American Christianity in all its expressions is largely dying and we, like drunks, are apparently so addicted to our religiosity that we would just as soon die with it in a pool of our own spiritual vomit than embrace the sobering cure.

But no, you won’t hear it, you won’t listen to it, you won’t take seriously the countless voices of those who’ve been left to drown in our wake. Deflecting truth, with your head buried in the echo chamber of your own understanding, has become to you a prized spiritual gift. For it is our deafness to the Christ crying out all around us that has drained the marrow out of our souls, rendered us nearly useless, and made us a sure enemy of God’s heart.

A voice cries out in the wilderness, “Christians, when will we lift our heads out of the sand and finally realize just who we have become?”

To those who have ears, let them hear.

We’ve become nose-blind to our own stench. The pungent, nose hair singeing aroma that exudes from our pores is the very reality we refuse to admit—our spiritual attitudes stink. Maybe we don’t put it into exact words, but we say it exactly in every other way. “We have the exclusive truth, and everyone else is the exclusive problem.” “We are right, and everyone else is wrong.” “We have all the answers and a Bible that clearly tells us so, who are you to question or differ in opinion?”

“You need to come and join us—think like us, believe like us, look like us, live like us, for we have the cure to you who are the cancer.” “God is working towards our success because of our faith-living while working towards your failure because of your rebellious sinning.” “We will always be just a bit better than you until that day you become one of us—in the meanwhile, we’ll be praying for you.”

With vomit dripping off their lips as countless fight the urge to gag, the world joins together in upchucking an honest chorus of reply, “thanks, but no thanks.” “We’d rather spend an eternity with our noses shackled to the excretion holes of a thousand skunks than to spend one moment becoming anything like you.”

Reeking with religious pretentiousness, to the spiritual nostrils of good people everywhere, we have become an all new fragrance for an all new world, “Stank” by Evangelical No. 5.

To those who have ears, let them hear.

We’ve spiritualized and justified hate. Countless mindful, thinking, good people observe the behavioral liturgies of our faith and truly wonder, how can anyone encounter Jesus personally and read the love-driven talks He gave, and yet somehow translate that into a faith ladened with racism, sexism, discrimination, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, nationalism, imperialism, judgement, and condemnation? This is incomprehensible to the world, and rightly so.

If there is any hate that should be adopted by our faith it should be directed at evil, which is defined by its root word in biblical Greek as being “the pursuit of making a name for oneself.” Interestingly enough, the essence of evil in God’s mind is not sin nor disbelief, but rather using Jesus for the pursuit of power for one’s own benefit.

It is the condemnation of others in order to secure our own sense of righteousness. It is the assertion of one’s rights to the minimizing, reducing, or removal of another’s. It is the privileged gripping onto their own privilege to the detriment of true equality. It is the building of walls where God desires tables. It is the exclusion of any of the “all” that Jesus always and forever includes. It is arrogantly insisting that one is “pro-life” while being equally determined to twist the scriptures in every possible way that brings condemnation’s death to those with whom we disagree or deem to be sinning.

To the level that the world despises us and the “Christian” label we wear, it is because we have given them every good and biblical reason to do so. For we have become evil’s highest manifestation—spiritualized hate.

To those who have ears, let them hear.

We’ve reduced Love into an accessory. As much as we might claim to be a people of love, the world knows us best by the love we fear. With us, every good thing has a condition, expiration date, and imposed limits. Don’t love people too much. Don’t give people too much grace. Don’t have too much fun. Don’t enjoy life too much. Don’t be around those people, go to that movie, listen to that song, or buy a cake from that baker—danger, danger, danger. Shackled by a fear-driven faith, we’ve turned love into a defensive, fragile posture.

In fact, nothing brings us more anxiety than God’s own declaration that He is Love—without conditions, restrictions, or expiration. Everything within our religious being fights and claws at this table-turning revelation and conclusion.

Why? Because, for God to be wholly and purely Love would render so much of what we are, do, and believe asridiculously absurd, contrived, selfish, useless, and anti Christ. The house of religious cards that has become much of our Christian faith falls tumbling to the ground the moment God is embraced as solely Love as He himself declares. The litany of additional attributes we project onto God that conveniently justify our loveless behavior, all become impotent—anger, judgement, wrath, punishment, revenge, and condemnation alike. That’s why we are so insistent on confusing Love, and making it an accessory.

The fact that people can experience God and live Him with one single Word—LOVE—sends our entire faith construct into a tailspin plummeting to earth in a ball of flaming fire.

All evil begins where Love has been made an accessory.

To those who have ears, let them hear.

We’ve turned a book into a bulldozer. The Bible is only black and white to people seeking the control of another and the spiritual justification of self. For nothing levels people we don’t like and creates mountains upon which to judge others like the perfected craft of Christians turning the Bible into a bulldozer. What God meant to be a human springboard to a life-long encounter with Jesus, Christians have turned into a people prod, hoping to corral the world into their religious misery.

The “clear teachings” of the Bible aren’t clear to anyone, and everyone knows it, except we who arrogantly claim to know it best. The heights of authority we insist on attributing to the Bible are often sadly equal to the depth of our desires to exert authority over others. “This is what the Bible says” is ultimately our clever way of declaring, “This is what we believe the Bible says, and you need to believe it too, or else.”

Yet, for all our proof-texting and bulldozing with Bibles, the world isn’t fooled, every verse loses its ability to condemn, judge, and breed self-righteousness the moment it is rightly placed under the feet of Jesus who is Grace, the only perfect Word of God.

The truth is, we don’t have to interpret the scriptures towards inerrancy, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, bigotry, a life of sin-management, God-appeasement, or a tormenting hell for people who miss the mark in loving God in return—we choose to. The flames of our hate, condemnation, and pride were in our hearts already, we just use the Bible to fuel them and give it all a spiritual glow.

People don’t dismiss the Bible because of Jesus, they dismiss the Bible because of us.

To those who have ears, let them hear.

We’ve become all talk, and our talk sucks. We sing the songs, say the prayers, attend the services, read our Bibles, make our promises, pledge our allegiance, and hope the world doesn’t look under the hood. The truth is, we’re faking-it-to-make-it along with everyone else who signs up for religion. If American Christianity was calibrated to the heart of Jesus, we wouldn’t have to do so much pretending.

We’d be singing far less songs to the Jesus on the worship screen and crying more tears with the Jesus on the streets. We’d be praying far less to God for His will, favor, and blessings, and doing much more for the hurting, marginalized, and oppressed. We’d be worshiping far less in elaborate buildings and serving more passionately without them. We’d be spending far less time idolizing the Bible and loading it for debate, and more time listening to people’s stories and seeking to truly understand them. We’d be spending far less time making promises to God we can’t keep and more time loving people in ways they would never be able to forget.

If only, we would simply take the advice of the Christ calling out from amidst the world, “stop talking, stop pretending, stop playing church, and learn to shut up and listen.”

See, people aren’t stupid, God has put His light into all humanity—they can do the spiritual math.

Love plus conditions equals no love at all. Gospel plus Law equals no gospel at all. A God who is Love but also hates, condemns, and forever imprisons is no god at all. Striving to please, appease, and satisfy an angry god is no life at all. Sin-managing, pretending, and looking the part equals no hope it all. Equality for some equals inequality for all. Inclusions for the privileged alone equals no inclusion at all. Being human without being humane is not being human nor divine at all. Hating the sin but loving the sinner equals hating it all. Thirty thousand different Christian denominations that believe entirely different things about the same Bible equals the sure and glaring reality that no Christian group or individual can accurately claim to truly know, understand, and rightly interpret it all.

As good as we are at building buildings, mission statements, ministry branding, smoke machines, video venues, robed choirs, ministry conferences, and clean carpets, the truth is, we suck at loving, we suck at being human, we suck at listening, we suck at serving, we suck at sacrificing, we suck at including, we suck at humility, we suck at unselfishness—basically all the things Jesus would have us to be and do.

The world sees it, yet we refuse. Perhaps because, to our surprise and ensuing rage, they have the Spirit and we have lost it.

Hear this and hear it clearly, God is awakening a people to His true self (who is Love) and His true Gospel (which is Grace), but sadly, most Christians and much of Christianity will have no part of it and therefore no part in it. My sense is, God is not only completely o.k. with that, He might just be behind it.

Where is the Grace in all of this?

It’s in the courage of trembling voices such as this, that speak, tell, and confront the religious hell on earth we have created and surely have become, believing there is still hope for us all—never giving up.

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To be sure, these are not easy words to write, but necessary, and nonetheless true.

The spiritual influences of darkness pulling the strings behind nearly every political headline in America is alarming—especially when the true culprit portrays and positions itself to be the only and ultimate cure.

Pulling the mask off perhaps the greatest spiritual scheme on planet earth is not a pleasant task nor one easily received.

As a pastor of 23 years, it has been my experience and it has become my conviction that much of conservative Evangelical Christianity manifests an evil unlike any wielded upon the earth. Its presentation of a false, mixed-Gospel of highly conditional love, a schizophrenically violent God, a spiritual justification of hate and condemnation, a weaponizing of the Bible, a legitimizing of self-righteousness, and a ruthless desire for world-domination has been the catalyst and cause of more death and destruction (spiritually, emotionally, and physically) than perhaps any other influencer—world history, a sure source of evidence.

Indeed, some who participate in this system of belief have genuine hearts to do what is right and are truly unaware of the evils and antichrist attitudes in which they have been indoctrinated and participate. Yet, nonetheless, much of conservative Evangelical Christianity aggressively stands as an intentional, religious movement that embodies the desire to eradicate the planet of anything that would disagree with and stand against its ideology—condemnation, conversion, and conquering its primary tools. Under the guise of Jesus, love, moral purity, and goodness, conservative Evangelical Christianity has become perhaps the greatest spiritual deception ever misted upon the masses—a pungent blasphemy against the Spirit, who is Grace.

As much as I wish all of this was unfounded and overly exaggerated, nothing confirms these strong assertions like conservative Evangelical Christianity’s undeniable lust and insatiable appetite for power and control. Their willingness to embrace blatant hypocrisy and double-standards, justify deplorable violence, and spiritualize human discrimination. Their willingness to rape the earth and its cultures, enable greed and materialism, conveniently usurp the teachings of Jesus, and arrogantly position themselves as the sole possessors of truth above all others, all for the furthering of their agenda and the needed power to do so, affirms the darkest of suspicions and the most urgent of calls for resistance. Strip away all the spiritual veneer—the heart and soul of much of conservative Evangelical Christianity is the spiritualized pursuit of power and control, virtually at any cost.

In fact, most everything you see in Donald Trump, his election, and life under his leadership is deeply intrinsic to the ethos of conservative Evangelical Christianity and what it’s truly like to be a part of their ministry world. Sadly, Donald Trump is merely the tip of the conservative Evangelical iceberg, mostly frozen to the core.

Trump focuses on aggressively giving our highest national priorities to self-serving interests regardless of their detriment to others. Conservative Evangelical churches have long focused their existence on self-preservation, internal interests, and increasing their numbers, facilities, and budgets, all while countless good people needlessly suffer just outside their doors. You don’t have to attend many a church meetings before you’re smacked in the face with the sobering conclusion—as spiritual as it all gets packaged, the bottom line for many churches ultimately revolves around the preservation and promotion of themselves—at times even displaying a cold callousness to the alarming needs around them.

Trump favors preserving the comfortable lives of the privileged and seeks out the wealthy and powerful for the most intimate of counsel. Conservative Evangelical churches have long catered to those who garner the highest financial and political means, enthusiastically gathering them into the leadership of their ministry. There is perhaps nothing more white, upper middle-class, pretentious, and privileged than what has become of modern, contemporary conservative Christianity. Big visions of big buildings and big campuses as far as the eyes can see, state-of-the-art worship venues, marketing, branding, books, concerts, conferences, and so called “reaching people for Christ” all costs big money. “Making church great again” for the white and well-to-do comes with a hefty price tag and the necessary appeasement and leveraging of the privileged.

Trump surrounds himself with primarily white, male influencers who are vetted by their unwavering loyalty to his unilateral leadership. Conservative Evangelical churches have long been dominated by white, male pastors and leaders who demand unwavering loyalty to their vision with the overall goal to increase their own power by the limiting of others. The contemporary move towards staff-led and pastor-led church leadership models often serves as a rationalizing and spiritualizing of the pursuit of power and control, energized by the ego and desire for ministry fame so rampant within modern Christianity.

Trump manifests a culture of fear and inequality where those who color outside the lines of conservative ideology and values are quickly condemned, discarded, and belittled. Conservative Evangelical churches have long been largely unwelcoming and un-wanting of those who are different in color, orientation, lifestyle, creed, or status. In fact, many on the fringe are largely deemed the enemy, unless of course they convert, clean up, behave, and buy into all things conservative. As Trump raises the level of our national defenses to an all-time high, conservative churches have long made what they stand against in the world to be their primary commission, often creating battles where none need to exist in order to justify their worth and mission. Listen in to a few church conversations and you will soon hear the clear underlying sentiment, “We are good, the world is so bad. What a shame. Let’s build some more walls and send some Bibles.”

Trump embodies callous arrogance, greed, bigotry, sexism, immorality, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and a foundational desire to conquer those who oppose him and gain the power to dominate them. What Trump has positioned as the “art of the deal” is merely a business version of the conservative Evangelical pursuit to “make disciples of people into people just like us.” No matter how much spiritual lipstick is plastered on the face of conservative Evangelical evangelism, the underlying goal is the same—the fruition of self-serving desires through spiritually packaged manipulation, coercion, and exploitation. Still to this day, many conservative churches see women as inferior, the LGBTQI community as needing of reparative therapy, financial prosperity as a sign and goal of faithfulness, the world as “lost,” and immorality as that which can be overlooked or minimized if you know the inside Evangelical handshake. In fact, any given Sunday between 11 a.m. and noon at just about any conservative Evangelical church near you, could very well serve to be the most sexist, homophobic, hypocritical, xenophobic, transphobic, racist, graceless, greedy, privileged, and spiritually arrogant hour you’ll ever experience.

Put a steeple on top of the White House and the workings, dealings, and ethos of the current administration and the leadership of president Trump, and one might easily confuse it all with their local, conservative Evangelical church. When it’s all said and done, the connections between the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency and the true soul and ambitions of conservative, Evangelical Christianity are undeniable and highly disgusting.

In fact, over the past several years, conservative Evangelical Christianity has perceived itself to be losing in a cultural war it actually created all by itself. Surprise—good, thinking people have awakened to the highjacking of Jesus, the Bible, and the cause of Christ by religious, Christian conservatism. Like a spoiled child throwing a temper tantrum in response to not being granted their every wants and wishes, conservative Evangelical Christianity has long been whining, pouting, and insisting on its own way in the private, public, and political square. The emergence of true equality always feels like war to the privileged.

Desperate to see their ideology survive and fulfill its twisted version of the “great” commission, conservative Evangelical Christianity savagely licked its fingers and led the way in electing Donald Trump as president. Whether you like him or not, voted for him or not, it’s all too clear that Trump serves as a message to all who would oppose and stand apart from religious, Christian conservatism, “We won, you lost, and now we’re gonna shove our way down your throat and do whatever the hell we want.”

As a middle finger raised boldly for all to see, Donald Trump is the true sum of conservative Evangelical Christianity and a clear sentiment of its dark soul of spiritualized hate, self-righteousness, duplicity, and greed. Though conservative Evangelical Christianity might not ever say “FU” to the world in those specific words, their messiah Donald Trump is gladly doing it for them—loud and clear.

Make no mistake and be not deceived, much of conservative Evangelical Christianity is a monster, that monster has a middle finger, and that middle finger has a name—Donald Trump.

Grace is brave. Be brave.

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You’ve stared down the aisle of homosexuality, perhaps taken a few steps of examination. It didn’t take long for the reality to overwhelm. The issues are complicated with lots of moving parts. From terms like LGBTQ to issues of biology, from political creeds to long held theology. You’re trying, you really are.

With an inner heartbeat pulsing toward love, if only to be free, yet chained to prescribed understandings of an ancient text, lines drawn by the God of your faith upbringing. At best, you’re now straddling a fence. Who’s right, who’s wrong? Bending and twisting, juxtaposing Grace and truth— two chopsticks in hand, insisting that one must be the fork and the other the spoon. Perhaps, the tension is too much, you’ve insisted on landing—the road most traveled, the familiar path. Determined, that as far as God is loving, He is also condemning of all things LGBTQ. One big mess of sin, a grotesque abomination, some foreign reality to God’s rendering that requires transformation. Not just a fork, not just spoon, but a knife, declaring gay doom.

Where you are is where you are, not going to debate that.

But on top of it all, the icing on the cake, you’ve boxed up all your concrete conclusions, wrapped them in black and white paper, and packaged it all as being “conservative.” The genetic codes of your believism, your safe and sure home base. Declaring the inside scoop to a sacred text, years of ecclesial tradition. Self-proclaimed protectors of Christian values, the clear and plain teachings, not to mention… God-inspiration. This is America, the Jesus-sanctioned nation. “Oh-o-say can you see…”

Keep on singing, why stop there. Not just defining what’s in some “conservative” box, claiming it as your own. But labeling all those outside it, throwing shade from your man-made throne.

The hymns of your condemnation. You’ve made it all so loud and clear. To you, I’m a slippery slope pastor. The rest of us, lost and wayward Christians. Heretical to the nines. We’re all just one of them, those liberals, bending to the sway of culture, watering down, sponging in a bath of perversion. Gently tickling, feathering the ears of all that would listen. To make it feel so good, to feel so easy. Living in the grey, postmodern relativism, all with the agenda, to do Satan’s bidding. Looking down your nose, patting me on the back, hoping one day I’ll graduate from this gay-affirmation. Sometimes with words, other times with silence, you say I’ve sold out a sovereign God, joined a long list of false prophets, blinded by culture’s coercion. I’m just another one of those misguided progressives, who simply can’t handle truth.

Well I don’t know who you think you are, but in my humble opinion, you’re way off base. Quite frankly, not even on the planet. You have no idea, not a clue, the journey I have taken, and that of many others.

So, I sure hope you have your adult diapers on, because here comes the truth. My gay-affirmation didn’t come from smoking some kind of progressive liberality, it actually came from the incense of my deep seeded conservatism.

I love Jesus, the Bible, and truth just as much as any other. It’s out of an ardent, soul stirring quest to get this right, that I have come to this LBGTQ-affirming conclusion.

I’m determined, to conserve the singular essence of God who is love, nothing more, nothing less. While you take your liberalities, dancing far outside the box, making Him into a schizophrenic, condemning monster of multiple personalties. I’m holding fast, staying close and true to His clear delight and hand in all creation. While you take your liberalities, twisting, bending, fabricating God into a human-hating, sin-focused old man, sitting at the edge of heaven’s seat, licking his chops for the moment to show the unrepentant the back of His eternal hand.

I’m determined, to conserve the seriousness of the Bible, its sacredness and divinity. While you take your liberalities, raping it, reducing it into a text that should be understood, in all things, only literally. As if God gave you the Bible as a whore of words with which you can simply have your way. Making it all seem so black and white, so you can control, manipulate, label and sway. Adding words, translations, and meanings, stripping them from their context. Treating the Bible like a three-ring circus, parts that seem to light your enemies on fire, gaining the height of your attention, even the rise of your entertainment.

I refuse to play these religious games, to have my faith spoon fed, joining in lines of religious herds, feeding from the trough of self-righteousness.

I’m determined, to conserve the person of Jesus, the only Word of God, who for the joy set before Him, the entirety of humanity, endured it all. His Gospel of Grace, His message of peace. The goodness, value, acceptance and pleasure He takes in all that He has created. The very One who declared our leather-bound Bibles aren’t our salvation, often reinterpreting long held beliefs, always to the displeasure of the religious.

I’m not going to stand aside while you play eternity games with people’s lives. While you hijack the Gospel with your no-gospel Gospel, and pimp it as life. Making “church” into a club of like-minded people whose greatest spiritual gift is to talk amongst themselves and judge the world. Turning Christianity into a moral play, and you, the holders of the script. Scaling the heights of true liberality, truth twisting, backsliding, all while you’re pointing fingers. Puffed up with arrogance, you call it “conservative,” lifting yourselves as the keepers of all that is God’s intention and will.

Well, I’m not buying it, and countless others are beginning to see behind the curtain. You aren’t a conservative Christian, you are a convenient Christian. Anything to keep power, privilege, and authority— the trinity of your ambition.

Creationism, racism, nationalism, fundamentalism. Homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, all bare the stench of your true liberality, moving so far away from the heart of God, Jesus, and the faith diary of His people. It’s all so convenient.

You are about as truly conservative as crayons taste like their colors. Spiritual shape-shifters, blending into, and making fit, anything that furthers your agenda— the one thing your brand of “conservatism” is good at accomplishing, the conserving of your own religious, self-righteous bigotry. A condemnation in your heart, seated deeper than any scripture.

For if you were truly conservative, you wouldn’t be anti-gay.

You’d stay so close to His nature, His heart, the person of His son Jesus. The thought of moving even just one step from His expanse, the incomprehensible essence of His ways. Seeing His image, his hand in all creation. The science, the biology, the complexity of it all. It would all be enough to give you pause. To stand in one place, on one thing alone… love.

From there, you could not be budged, you could not be moved.

Convinced that God is in all, and that God is good.

He is greater, His love higher, and his affirmation, universe reaching.